Text reads: Call for papers, Special issue. The Cultural Lives and Afterlives of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Data, in Sexuality & Culture. Guest editors: Dr Amin Ghaziani & Dr Kevin Guyan. Expressions of interest due: 1 June 2026.

🔥 CALL FOR PAPERS: The Cultural Lives and Afterlives of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality Data.

I'm co-editing a Special Issue of Sexuality & Culture with Amin Ghaziani.

📝 Full details: link.springer.com/collections/hcbbadjbha

#CfP #callforpapers #sexuality #gender #data

Interested in what the rise of AI & machine learning algorithms mean for politics? Join us @leverhulmecal.bsky.social for a workshop on the politics of algorithmic life. Free to attend & bursaries available for postgrads & ECRs.

Image text relates to winner of Sage journal prize

We are very happy to announce the winning paper of the Sociology Sage Prize for Innovation and/or Excellence!

Not Talking about Climate Change: Everyday Interactions, Relational Work and Climate Silences, explores self-silencing and the meanings attached to climate talk:
doi.org/10.1177/0038...

The front cover of Queer in a Wee Place.

Text reads: Hate crime in Scotland and the classification of queer lives: Doors, data and definitions. A razor-thin line exists between safety and danger for LGBTQ people in Scotland. One misstep a glance at the wrong person, a flamboyant hand gesture, a lilt in your speech can mark the moment when everything changes for the worse. Smiles turn to tears, blood and bruises. When the switch happens, as it so often does, the response of the police and courts depends on who you are or are perceived to be. The process of classifying you as 'something' reflects societal assumptions about categories of gender, sex and sexuality: the lifestyles that count as lives, the practices deemed possible and where these decisions locate you on a hierarchical ladder stretching between protection and harm.

✨ Happy publication day to Queer in a Wee Place: Small Nations, Sexuality & Scotland!

In my chapter, I use hate crime as a starting point for a broader discussion of the cracks in Scotland’s liberal and inclusive imaginary as a queer, wee place.

www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-de...

The EFI Critical Data Studies Cluster presents: Amelia Acker - Book Talk: "Archiving Machines: A Material History of Data Storage"

This is tomorrow in Edinburgh. All welcome. Please see the updated venue:

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-efi-cr...

Doing urban citizenship with (broken) digital data from an air pollution sensor osf.io/preprints/so...

🚨🚨 BSA Conference 2026 Announcement 🚨🚨

⁉️ Early-career sociologist?
⁉️ Attending this year's BSA Conference?
⁉️ Want to learn how to turn pedagogy into publications?

👉 Then, attend the ECF Workshop on 9 April 9AM, Lecture Theatre B, Uni of Manchester

🙌 See you there!

The Olympics Has a New Sex Testing Policy. The Evidence Doesn’t Add Up I’ve spent over 10 years obsessed with so-called “gender verification” tests. Proponents claim they have history and science on their side. They don’t.

Oh did you want 3300 words from me on today's IOC sex testing rules? An essay on the nature of evidence and why we can't seem to stop getting stuck in the same traps around sex and gender in sports? Wow lucky you!! www.coyotemedia.org/the-olympics...

🥳🥳 Woop! x

A mouse in a cage | Book launch | Dr Carrie Friese 6pm Thurs 26 March | Free public event at LSE

📘 Join us tonight at LSE for the launch of Carrie Friese’s 'A Mouse in a Cage', with reflections on the sociological, ethical and political questions raised by the lives of laboratory animals and the practices that shape them.

🕕 6pm | 📍 OLD.3.24
🎟️ All welcome!

buff.ly/qXWcryM

NHS and IT. Only around half (49%) of NHS staff responding to Health Foundation staff survey on Electronic Patient Records had received training on how to use the EPR system and less than a third (28%) had received training on how to fix or troubleshoot problems.
www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...

All good things come to an end It is with great sadness that we are sharing the news that the UCL Faculties of Social & Historical Sciences and Arts & Humanities have decided to close the IAS on 31 July 2026.

Shocking news. Obviously one doesn't know the ins and outs, but it's hard to comprehend how such a large and weathy university as UCL finds itself unable to support a cutting-edge humanities research institute. Solidarity with everyone affected. www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...

Donald MacKenzie · AI’s Scale AI’s scale doesn’t matter just to specialists. The rest of us are being taken on a ride along the logarithmic curve...

This is a must-read, but I can't help thinking that more emphasis needs to be placed on the resonance between the pursuit of scientific scale for AI and the underlying and explicit pursuit of business scale at all costs for platforms and investors
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Hands holding a copy of "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" by Amelia Acker on a plain background. The cover depicts a punch card.

In "Archiving Machines," Amelia Acker traces the rise of networked data through the evolution of archiving and digital storage.

Available in paperback and #OpenAccess: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255324...

The mirage of AI deregulation One of the most interventionist approaches to technology governance in the United States in a generation has cloaked itself in the language of deregulation. In early December 2025, President Donald Tr...

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Whoa😲 "DHSC is standing down the NIHR Maximising Impact and Public Partnership contract. Teams across the NIHR Coordinating Centre and wider NIHR community will continue to embed Impact and Inclusion into everything they do":
www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/wha...

#PPI #PublicInvolvement

I'm co-chairing the Society for Social Studies of Science @4sweb.bsky.social Conference in Toronto, Oct 2026. #STS #scipol #innovation

Theme: "TechnoPower • Technoscientific Futures".

Open panel submissions portal is open! ls!

Deadline: 2nd February 2026

www.4sonline.org/about_the_co...

Excited to announce @leverhulmecal.bsky.social posts - we are looking for 7 interdisciplinary fellows to join our Leverhulme Centre for Algorithmic Life, closing date 30 January 2026 (1/3) durham.taleo.net/careersectio...

Why is research participation in free fall? Some thoughts, on @bsaecf.bsky.social @costoflivingblog.bsky.social Blog www.cost-ofliving.net/just-saying-...

📢 Applications are open for the Sociology (SOC) and Work, Employment and Society (WES) Editorial Boards!

Both welcome ECRs, with Sociology offering mentoring for those newer to reviewing.

🗓️ Deadline: 30 Oct 2025, 17:00 GMT
👉 Apply or nominate: www.mi-nomination.com/britsoc

So true and so very sad if this becomes widespread. What's next? AI research participants (this may already be a thing but i'd rather not check and continue to exist in ignorance for the time being)

Given all the research that shows intersectional bias & stigma is baked into these LLMs, this is a troubling initiative. People are often’hard to reach’ b/c there aren’t attempts to reach them on their terms. AI isn’t going to fix that, nor will it have capacity to provide more meaningful insights.

Can some of us agree that we must not treat LLMs as replacements for real, breathing, feeling, located, relational, caring, uncaring, difficult, annoying, inefficient people?

So now they're developing AI-simulated patient & public involvement/engagement (PPIE) panels and claiming it will ensure 'more inclusive' and 'diverse' patient involvement (by simulating lived experience of those harder to recruit to panels).

www.nhsgoldenjubilee.co.uk/research-and...

Co-authored with @andrewleyshon.bsky.social for a forthcoming special issue of @finandsoc.bsky.social, this essay takes Elon Musk's planned FinTech makeover of X as a provocation for a critical analysis of so-called 'embedded finance' and the evolution of FinTech
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

THIS! Inclusive PPIE matters, but simulating lived experience just completely misses the point. PPIE seeks input and partnership but also builds community, trust and relationships that shape research over time. It involves (and should involve!) a lot of ongoing work and effort.

This makes my heart sink.

S5 E11 - Steven Shapin on the Social Life of Scientific Knowledge Podcast Episode · The HPS Podcast - Conversations from History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science · 19/10/2025 · 50m

This week we welcome Prof. Steven Shapin to the pod!🎙️

We explore his journey through interdisciplinary spaces, revisit Leviathan and the Air-Pump 40 years on, and explore how credibility, trust and expertise are shaped by the fragmentation of expertise and (recent) political & cultural challenges

We want robust, enormous research that is SUCH good research, you already know how important and right and insightful it is before you even start it. We want research so predeterminedly world-changing that there is hardly any point actually doing the research at all.

'"You can’t have hobbyist research that’s unfunded going on in institutions. We can’t afford it.”'

Such a badly formulated phrasing of the issues, so open to so many misinterpretations. If this is the level of thinking about research among sector leaders and policy-makers, be very afraid.